ootsfandomcom-20200222-history
Nale
Nale is the evil twin brother of Elan (his name is also "Elan" spelled backwards), and the head of The Linear Guild. He first appeared in the Dungeon of Dorukan, where he and the Linear Guild attempted to kill The Order of the Stick and claim the Talisman of Dorukan. He is a multiclass fighter/rogue/sorcerer who specializes in enchantments which, he eventually came to realize, is the same combination of abilities as his bardic twin, just more complicated. History He was raised by Tarquin, his ruthless, lawful evil father, a powerful general of an evil army, while Elan was raised by the two's mother, a kindly, chaotic good barmaid. In terms of magic, he has stated he specializes in Enchantment spells (Spell Focus (Enchantment) feat) and simply selected a large number of enchantments for his repertoire. He followed his father to the Western Continent and his campaigns to establish himself as a King in this unstable geography. Two years ago they helped the Empress of Blood ascend the throne. Afterwards he tried to seize the power for himself and he performed several crimes (murder, conspiracy and treason) against the Empire of Blood. The Empress put a bounty on him. Nale knows that he is the “evil twin” of Elan, and has gone to great lengths to recreate an “evil”(or good in the case of Belkar) version of the Order of the Stick, commenting once that he had “invested a lot of time and energy into this ‘Evil Opposites’ theme”. The original version of the Linear Guild was not 'necessarily based on them (although the name suggests otherwise), but in preparation for their second showdown, Nale went to great lengths to find evil counterparts for Durkon(Leeky Windstaff), and Belkar(Yokyok) (though considering that Belkar is already Chaotic Evil, it is unknown just how evil Yokyok was), and made huge effort to find an evil version of Vaarsuvius before finally discovering Pompey. A running gag is that when Nale is lying, he openly states what he is lying about in his speech, yet his target never catches on (or when they do, nothing becomes of it). He tends to brag that, despite his obvious lies, his bluff skill is able to convince his target of anything. At one time, Nale kidnapped Julia Greenhilt and invited Roy to come to Cliffport and bring Elan with him. This was a scheme and succeeded in replacing his brother within the Order (shaved off his beard and glued onto his brother in order to swap places with him) in order to join and kill the Order of the Stick, and traveled with them (by teleportation) to Azure City. He had planned to eliminate the other members of the Order as quickly as possible by engineering things so that he ends up alone with each one in turn. However, upon discovering the Order of the Stick's mission to protect the Gates of the Snarl from Xykon, Nale has changed his plans; he now intends to seize control of the Gates himself, having deduced that Xykon must have devised a way to channel and direct the energy of the Snarl. Eventually Elan escaped the prison he was kept instead of Nale, and found his way to the Azure City. Nale was captured by Elan, Vaarsuvius, Haley, and Durkon, and imprisoned by the Sapphire Guard in anti-magic cells, Nale escaped with Sabine and Thog during the war with Xykon and left the city to resume efforts to take one of the two remaining gates (after a visit to an ice cream parlor). At this point Elan and the rest of the OotS team believe Nale to be dead. It is not known where Nale went after the occupation of the Azure City. Once again, Elan paid the price in the Empire of Blood while the OotS was looking for Girard's Gate. Character He both appears and sounds identical to Elan; the only physical difference between the two brothers is Nale’s small goatee (confirmed by Rich Burlew in the first collected book as an intentional reference to Spock in the Star Trek Mirror Universe) which Nale shaved off and glued onto his brother in order to swap places with Elan during one of his plans to kill the Order of the Stick. He eventually grows it back after the deception was discovered. His cunning, scheming and evil nature makes him the opposite of the light-hearted, good-natured and comically inept Elan. He is also in a relationship with Sabine, Haley's opposite, whereas Elan seemed somewhat oblivious to Haley's feelings towards him for nearly four hundred strips. He is the smartest member of the guild, though he has a tendency to outsmart himself. He is quite skilled with words and is a master planner. He has also proven that he can think very quickly on his feet and come up with an intelligent, if not the best, solution to his problems, once again in opposition to Elan, who usually just wings it. Due to his theatrics and sadism he may be described as a competent "Bond Villain". His "tragic" flaw is that he over complicates a situation, such as once killing 421 random people, just to point the police to where he would be located (on a map, pushpins of the crimes made arrows to his hideout). His intelligence is also his weakness for many times his overconfidence or underestimating others results in his downfall. Category:Humans Category:Fighters Category:Sorcerers Category:Rogues Category:Lawful Evil Characters Category:Males Category:Living Characters Category:Linear Guild Category:Elan's Family